I am planning to expand my hard drive but confused between external and internal. Is it that internal hard drive faster or anything? Why buy it over external?

Nikhil Chandak

September 27, 2012 at 2:41 pm

ask the company from which u hv buyed the comp. or laptop
or
it must be Internal Storage ...

EL

September 23, 2012 at 6:55 am

Depends what you need it for. Internal drives are usually cheaper, and are less likely to fall of your desk and break. External drives are easier to move around. It's your call.

Sachin Kanchan

September 21, 2012 at 11:49 am

the speed difference are not too much these days....
but given the portability, you better get an external hard drive though the price would be a little higher...

furthermore, the new USB 3.0 are out, so i suggest you buy on of those; if your pc has old usb 2.0 posts the speeds won't be much, in fact the same or average like any other.

but if you were to ever get new laptop or pc, or needed to replace the motherboard of the existing pc with new one consisting of the 3.0 ports, then you are sure to feel the difference...

USB 3.0 to USB 3.0 : 300+mbps transfer speed minimum to anywhere about 2 to 5 GBPS ... it would be worth the price...and a wise decision in the long run...

I got myself a WD Passport Essential 1TB USB 3.0 at around $115, though my lappie has USB 2.0 the speeds vary from 18mbps to 75mbps

vasu gupta

September 21, 2012 at 11:12 am

you should buy a external hardrive .

Vishal Mishra

September 20, 2012 at 6:25 pm

It is a good idea to buy a External Drive as you can take it anywhere you want and it works as fast as an internal drive (nearly), if you are going to buying USB 2.0. And if you are going to buy a USB 3.0 then there is no problem of speed. ( Remember your computer should support USB 3.0 for a USB 3.0 external hard drive).

shaurya gupta

September 20, 2012 at 11:49 am

It depends upon why you want the hard disk. if you want portability, you'd want external if it is a pc. an internal will provide you greater speed. plus the internal one won't get lost!

backup of a windows "C:" drive is to use internal hard drive. In this case the system keeps a real-time mirror of your C. If the C: drive should fail, you simply remove it and make the secondary drive the new primary drive.

DalSan Mack

September 19, 2012 at 11:47 pm

The speed of file transfers would be a little better for internal hard drive, but if you use an external drive for media files, the speed difference would not matter much. You can install programs to run off of either hard drive type, but internal would be best for that. If you mostly would use the extra drive for media files and documents, external would offer the ability to be connected to other computers and devices pretty easily, even HD tvs if the hard drive is formatted to FAT32 and video files are in compatible format like AVI.

Ram Lalit

September 20, 2012 at 1:18 am

thanx for the above details.
Can u tell me which is more durable?

Bruce Epper

September 20, 2012 at 2:25 am

The actual drive inside of the housing of an external drive is an internal hard drive (it's the same make and model you can physically put into your system). Neither is "more durable" but it is less likely you will have issues with an internal drive since it does not have an extra controller which does conversion from the drive's SATA interface to USB, FireWire or the extra couple of components used by eSATA (normally appears to be a small amplifier/filter circuit).

Ram Lalit

September 20, 2012 at 3:48 am

thnx this was of great help.

DalSan Mack

September 20, 2012 at 2:35 am

Most of that is anecdotal, meaning there really isn't much difference, just opinions on which is better. Eternal drives can actually last longer if they aren't used extensively, like unplugging them when not in use. You can't exactly do that with internal drives. But for the most part, Samsung drives tend to have higher ratings with performance and how long they last. Funnily, Western Digital internal drives get worse ratings than external ones, even if the drives are exactly the same. I probably would stay away from Hitachi, but most of the other brands would be good. Make sure to get a drive with higher buffering memory and rpm to get the most out of it. Another thing to look at is if you plan on taking the external drive with you anywhere or not, because portable drives don't have to have an external power source in some cases and are smaller in size, but desktop external drives do need an external power source and are in general bulkier in size.

Ram Lalit

September 20, 2012 at 3:48 am

many thnx mack :)

DalSan Mack

September 20, 2012 at 4:10 am

You're welcome. Bruce's warning should be taken into consideration. If you want to be able to put the external hard drive into your computer in case of issues that may arise like Bruce said, then get an external drive that uses a 3.5 inch hard drive in it, which usually is the desktop version of the external drive. Those issues aren't rare, but I can't say they happen very often, either.